Blog
MIDI-CI Makes Its Debut
Craig Anderton digs into the MIDI Capability Inquiry specification—and digs it.
Musician/author Craig Anderton is an internationally recognized authority on music and technology. His onstage career spans from the 1960s with the group Mandrake, through the 2000s with electronic groups Air Liquide and Rei$$dorf Force, to the “power duo” EV2 with Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgroove, and EDM-oriented solo performances. He has played on, produced or mastered more than 20 major label recordings and hundreds of tracks, authored over 45 books, toured extensively, played Carnegie Hall, worked as a studio musician in the 70s, written over a thousand articles, lectured on technology and the arts (in 10 countries, 38 U.S. states, and three languages), and done sound design and consulting work for numerous music companies. He is a former President of The MIDI Association, and holds two patents related to audio technology. For free access to over 200 articles and more information, please visit craiganderton.org. For music and instructional videos, go to youtube.com/thecraiganderton.
Blog
Is Thunderbolt 3 the Data Savior?
By Craig Anderton. Thunderbolt 3 looks poised to become the breakthrough protocol its originators always hoped it would be.
Blog
Software Tech: The Year of the Platform
By Craig Anderton. Given the pro audio and music industry’s relatively small slice of the economic pie, a platform makes sense. Products need staying...
Blog
Software Tech: Is Modular Software the Future?
By Craig Anderton. Software’s “next big thing” could be modular software that allows mixing and matching elements from various programs.
Blog
Lessons We Can Learn from Cakewalk’s Demise
The sudden death of Cakewalk was a cautionary tale for companies—and customers. Here's the take-aways.
Blog
The 143rd AES Convention Anderton Awards
With the restraining order from last year’s Anderton Awards still in effect (but c’mon—no one actually died from the food), this year the world’s...
Blog
Yes, Even Guitars
Guitars are more likely to be associated with tubes and retro technology than cutting-edge software, but that’s changing in everything from recording...
Blog
The Calm Before the Storm—12 Years Later
If you look at “new product” introductions at trade shows, often they’re more about reminding people of what was a new product a...
Blog
Advances in Archiving
Recently, I ran across a family photo that was taken in 1890, affixed to a cardboard backing—and was as good as the day...
Blog
Digital Audio Formats: What’s Next?
Two recent events underscore changes in the world of digital audio. The first is the end of licensing for MP3 data compression (or more...
Blog
Is the Pen Mightier than the Mouse?
Last month’s column covered the Windows Creators update, and although there was a fair amount of detail on the Surface Dial, I mentioned Pen...
Blog
Windows Creators Update Meets Pro Audio
Although concerns about Apple’s commitment to pro-level creators are likely overblown—Apple probably has a few tricks up its sleeve for 2018—Microsoft is doing a...
Blog
Cracks in the Mac?
Since its introduction, the Mac’s share of the pro audio market has been hugely disproportionate to its general market share. It upended the Amiga—at...
Blog
Touching and MIDI and Clouds—Oh My!
Although Apple wasn’t at NAMM, it chose that time slot to introduce Logic Pro X 10.3. And in typical Apple fashion, it embodied three...
Blog
Interfacing with Interfaces at NAMM 2017
NAMM has been making an effort to get pro audio more involved in the show, and the 2017 NAMM convention had more bait than...
Blog
EQ: The Next Generation
When plugins first appeared, the goal was often to provide virtual equivalents of hardware devices—similarly to how CGI originally reproduced reality less expensively. But...
Blog
Testing, Testing
Let’s salute the unsung hero of modern recording software: test and measurement. In the days of tape, your test gear was VU meters that...
Blog
Mixing and Mastering with “Self-Driving” Audio
Here’s an interesting workforce statistic: Far more jobs are lost to robots than to companies sending jobs overseas. But of course, as recording engineers,...
Blog
The 141st AES Anderton Awards
It’s been said the only survivors of a nuclear war would be cockroaches and Cher’s career…but then there’s the Anderton Awards, "honoring" the...
Blog
Is Video the DAW’s Final Frontier?
With a few exceptions, most recent DAW changes have been incremental: We haven’t seen huge breakthroughs like when Opcode’s Vision merged hard disk audio...
Blog
Fix It Before The Mix
When multitrack tape recording progressed beyond a few tracks, a new phrase was added to the recording lexicon: “Fix it in the mix,��...
Gear and Technology
Software Tech: Stability Wars
As we become ever-more dependent on computers, we increasingly run the risk of being blindsided by our tools.
news
Software: The State of the Software
Yes, these are challenging times—and times that are difficult to quantify.
news
The Ever-Evolving Subscription Model
It seems like only yesterday we covered changes in subscription software—last March, to be exact. But, in “computer years,” six months can be an...
news
Will Windows 10 Take It to Eleven?
One of the big surprises at Summer NAMM was Microsoft’s courtship of the audio industry, with both a general overview in the Davidson Ballroom,...
news
Can You Be Replaced by a Software Algorithm?
For decades, mastering was considered an arcane, difficult art capable of being mastered (sorry about the pun) only by those with Jedi-level skill sets.
news
Trending at Frankfurt Musikmesse
The biggest news in Frankfurt was the Messe hierarchy shakeup and subsequent schedule changes.
news
The Big Ten
Did you get your questionnaire from Apple and Microsoft about what audio/video-oriented features you wanted in their latest operating systems? Neither did I, so...
news
The Subscription Model Gathers Momentum
This column covered the subscription model in June 2013—but a lot has happened since then, and now our industry has followed Adobe’s lead.
Blog
Auto-Tune: The Controversy That Will Not Die
Auto-Tune hit the world in 1997, and Antares has continued to update its software since then.
Recording
The 2014 Anderton Awards
It was a cliffhanger: With the founder of the audio industry’s only virtual awards show absent due to pressing family concerns, the Anderton Awards...
Business
What’s Next for DAWs?
The late John Simonton, PAIA Electronics’ founder, was a visionary—and I don’t use that word often.
news
Leaning on Support
Many people maintain that DAWs have evolved to being much the same— they all cut, paste, copy, import, export, etc.
Recording
USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt…Oh My!
In our computer-based world, every now and then, there’s a wrenching transition.
news
Who’s Minding the Storage?
The most valuable part of any computer is its data—and the amount of data being generated by the modern studio continues to increase.
Business
The 2013 Anderton Awards
The Anderton Awards, the virtual awards ceremony that hits AES every year like a 24-hour intestinal flu, got off to a great start!